Prior to the present invention, lap/shoulder safety belts have been utilized in automotive vehicles to restrain the movement of a passenger from a seated position which might result from turning and/or braking of the vehicle. Generally, such lap/shoulder belt systems have a shoulder portion attached at one end to an inertia locking wind-up reel fixed within the vehicle and an integral lap portion having its end fixed to an anchor plate attached to the vehicle at the lower door sill. The shoulder and lap portions are part of a continuous webbing looped through a slot in a belt buckle latch plate which presents little or no friction to the belt webbing thereby allowing the free transfer of belt webbing between the shoulder and lap portions for ease of adjustment to fit the wearer. The latch plate has a portion which can be placed into the belt buckle anchored to the vehicle to secure the shoulder and lap belts thereto so that the wearer is effectively restrained in the event of extreme situations such as an impact causing rapid vehicle deceleration.
While such lap/shoulder systems fully meet standards to restrain the wearer, an additional device is needed to hold a child restraining seat in position during normal driving maneuvers by minimizing the transfer of webbing between the lap and shoulder portions. Prior to the present invention, this has been accomplished by a one piece clip having a centralized bar that connects parallel end pieces that have inwardly facing tangs at their extremities. The adjacent shoulder portion of the seat belt webbing is layered with the lap belt portion and is inserted in the clip so that the webbing layers extend over the bar and under the tangs to thereby frictionally interconnect these two belt areas and effectively fix or lock the length of the lap portion. While this prior clip inhibits the transfer of webbing between the shoulder and the lap portions, difficult manual manipulation of the belt webbing and clip are required inhibiting clip installation particularly after the belt has been snugly adjusted about the child restraint seat and locked in tension into the buckle. In the event that the belt is unbuckled to relieve the belt tension so that the clip can be installed with relative ease, it becomes very difficult to rebuckle the belt as foreshortened by the clip.